Edom’s greed led to their destruction (Ezekiel 36:5)

Today’s Readings: Ezekiel 35-36; John 17

With fiery passion I have spoken against the rest of the nations, but most especially to Edom, who with malicious joy took My precious land for themselves and divided it up as their spoil.

The prophecies often require a little historical background to understand the context in which God foretells the future of nations. So, why does God pick out Edom particularly to lash out against in His messages to Ezekiel? To answer the question, we must go all the way back to the story of Isaac.

God promised Isaac, as He had Abraham, would become the father of a nation whose descendants were as numerous as the stars in the sky. His wife, Rebekah gave birth to twin boys. The oldest, who would become heir two-thirds of all Isaac’s property and patriarch of the family, according to custom, was Esau. The second twin was Jacob. Rebekah loved Jacob more. Isaac loved Esau more. As in most families, the boys’ personalities couldn’t be more different.

Jacob deceived Esau twice, once for his birthright so that Jacob would inherit the larger portion of Isaac’s estate and again as Isaac pronounced his final blessings and gave Esau’s blessing to Jacob making him ruler over his brother. Soon after, Jacob left the tribe to find a wife, but more to escape his brother’s wrath.

Both sons, Jacob and Esau became wealthy in their own right. Both became great nations. But the stories of how Jacob deceived his father lived on through the generations. Edom, the descendants of Esau, always viewed the descendants of Jacob as thieves. They felt all the land Israel owned really belonged to them. Despite the fact Moses and Joshua never attacked or allowed any of the tribes to take anything from the Edomites as they settled into the land God gave them. Edom was Esau’s inheritance, given to them by God. Israel was Jacob’s inheritance, given to them by God. All of the land was and is His. He decides who will reside where, whether we think it true or not.

When Edom decided they would take the land of Judah and Israel after Nebuchadnezzar took the Israelites into exile, the few who remained in the land would easily fall into defeat by the armies of Edom. God decided otherwise, though. The land belonged to Him and His design was to give the land back to Israel after their period of exile ended. The consequences of Edom’s greed would fall on their heads.

Ezekiel’s prophecy tells us what God planned for them because of their greed. Edom’s people also went into exile, but the prophecy contains no mention of restoration of their land. In fact, Edom’s defeat by the Babylonians is complete. They take the people into exile, burn their towns and villages, stone and salt their farms, and make the land uninhabitable for years. Edom ceases to exist as a nation.

What I like about the Old Testament is the correlation between the actions of nations we see in the stories in God’s word and the behavior of individuals today. When we individually behave as the nations depicted in history behaved, we can expect similar reaction from God. If we decide to let greed overtake us, we can expect God to take back ownership of what is His in the first place. We forget that everything is His. We are but stewards and as long as we manage His property appropriately, He allows us to use it. We we don’t, He can and will take it back at any time He chooses.

Join me next time, won’t you?

Richard

What happened to Egypt? (Ezekiel 32:19)

Today’s Readings: Ezekiel 30-32; John 15

Ask Egypt, “Who compares to your beauty now?
Go down into the pit and rest among the uncircumcised pagans.”

Something struck me as I read Ezekiel’s prophecy concerning Egypt today. The only thing we’ve seen of Egypt throughout our lives are the desert wastelands. Some fertile fields around the Nile River spring up, but for the most part, everything you see about Egypt is brown. It’s like that in every picture you see. There’s just not much color in the landscape of the country.

Neither is there color in the landscape of Libya, Ethiopia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, or any of the other middle east countries we read about in Ezekiel’s prophecies. The land is scorched by the sun, brown, and nothing grows unless irrigated by mechanical means. I admit, my experiences in that part of the world were not for vacations and my mood may not have been the best. I might not have looked for all the beauty spots across the land during my eight months traveling through several of those countries. But all of them looked the same. Bleak! Brown! Almost uninhabitable compared to my experiences in the United States.

Now compare what we see today on television with the descriptions of that part of the world in the Old Testament. Israel’s spies called it a land flowing with milk and honey. It took two men to carry a single bunch of grapes. Harvests boggled the imagination of those who saw them. Scripture talks about the cedars of Lebanon. Their height and beauty must have marveled those who ventured there. I can only imagine they compared to the redwood forests of our northwest.

The descriptions we read of Egypt, Israel, Edom, Aram, Babylon, Assyria, and all the other countries which Ezekiel names in his list that will feel the wrath of God all bear the scars of unimagined devastation. The lush forests, fertile fields, thriving economies, world powers, never returned from the time of the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy until today. The world powers these nations represented enticing Israel into their idolatrous worship felt the wrath of God as surely as Israel and never regained their stations in the world.

Of all the nations named, only Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, and Israel still exist. None can call themselves world powers, except perhaps Israel with their nuclear capability and every nation’s inability to conquer them since their rebirth in 1947.

Sometimes, these Old Testament prophecies against nations that no longer exist may seem boring or pointless. But the point is, God does what He says He’s going to do. At the end of His book, He says a lot about what will happen. It is cloaked in symbolism and descriptions John did not have the vocabulary to describe, but the end result is clear. Those who follow God and His Son who died on the cross for us, will spend eternity with Him. Those who go their own way will also face judgment, and John describes an eternal hell where there is wailing and weeping and gnashing of teeth. We make our own choice.

Join me next time, won’t you?

Richard

God means what He says (Ezekiel 5:1-4)

Today’s Readings: Ezekiel 5-7

Eternal One: Now, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a straight razor to shave your head and beard. Then take scales and divide the hair up by weight into thirds. 2 When the days prescribed for the siege are over, take a third of the hair and burn it in a fire within the city walls. Then take another third and thrash it with a sword all around the city. Scatter the last third of the hair to the wind. Then I will draw My sword and chase them! 3 Keep a few strands of the hairs and tie them to the edges of your garment. 4 Take some of these extra strands of hair and fling them into the fire to burn them up. From there, a fire will spread to the whole house of Israel.

Jesus used parables to get His message across to the people He spoke to. God often asked His prophets to use not only parables but to live out their lives as an example of something He wanted to tell them. In chapter 4, God tells Ezekiel to lay on his left side for 390 days and on his right side for 40 days to represent the years during which Israel and Judah worshiped false gods.

In these verses, God tells Ezekiel to cut his hair and use it as an example of what will happen to Jerusalem, the last bastion of security for God’s people. An almost impenetrable fortress, Jerusalem had not been defeated since David captured it from the Jebusites and then made provisions within the city so others would not repeat his feat.

God made other plans. Because of Israel’s sin in worshiping other gods, the Babylonians came in and laid siege to the city. We don’t think much about a siege today because it just isn’t used as a military tactic today. Then, however, it was a strategy of choice against a fortification like Jerusalem. The enemy suffered few losses. The city inevitably surrendered.

Occasionally, a siege included ramps to scale walls and defeat an enemy in hand to hand fighting. To build such ramps against Jerusalem would take years to construct. It was just as easy to just surround the mountain with troops and allow nothing into or out of the city. With Jerusalem sitting on the top of a mountain and rainfall the only means of getting water when the springs were plugged from below, water soon became a critical issue for the city.

Since most food came in from the surrounding countryside to feed the people in the city, once the gates closed, the inhabitants slowly starved. I expect Jerusalem’s markets were not much different from today’s cities. Most cities in America hold about three days of food. The difference then and now is that people went to the market daily in ancient times because of the inability to preserve food. Today we probably have four to seven days of supplies in our pantries. They had two to three days of food.

So within a week, Jerusalem was hungry, living off of the few vegetable gardens people grew in their small back yards. Anarchy set in and those gardens became stripped of food by those with strength or weapons. After a couple of months, even the strongest soldiers knew they would never fight against the enemy stationed outside their gates. They no longer had the stamina to survive in battle.

After several months with nothing left of the animals, vegetables, fruit, leaves on trees, or even grass to eat, the only thing left to eat were the dead and the children. God told Moses this would happen if the Israelites bowed to other gods. Now His wrath came to fruition as starvation led people to do things they thought they would never do. The least important in society, the youngest and oldest, became food for the survivors.

Running away from God carries horrid consequences, as His chosen people discovered. If His chosen suffered the terrors and horrid conditions leveled by His wrath, what can we expect for our failure to follow Him? Sometimes, I think we forget that as a holy God, there exists a side of God that demands justice for evil. He holds off on the execution of justice for a time because of His grace. Jerusalem learned the hard way God means what He says. As a nation, can’t we learn from their example?

Join me next time, won’t you?

Richard

 

Can we share like Jeremiah shared? (Jeremiah 37:6)

Today’s Readings: Jeremiah 37-39

It was then that the word of the Eternal came to Jeremiah the prophet, who faithfully delivered it to the king’s messengers.

No one like the things Jeremiah shared with the king and his advisors. While they sought relief from the destruction coming their way from the invasion of foreign armies, Jeremiah kept telling them to surrender to Babylon. For decades, he preached the same message. Surrender to the Chaldeans (Babylonians) and live. Stay in Jerusalem and you will die of disease, famine, or sword.

Consequently, officials beat Jeremiah, arrested him, put him in prison, tried to execute him, put him in a muddy cistern, fed him just enough to keep him alive, and we don’t know what else. Needless to say, Jeremiah did not have a comfortable, luxurious life despite the wealth in the land of Israel at the time.

Still, Jeremiah remained faithful to God’s call upon his life. He steadfastly shared God’s word to those around him. It sounded like treason to the king and the officials surrounding him, but it echoed God’s judgments against those who continually broke the covenant established with God so many years earlier.

I wonder how many of us would do what Jeremiah did? I love our country. I think it remains the greatest country on earth, but I also know it is headed in the wrong direction. We have become tolerant of things God clearly condemns. We discard our children and our elderly. We fail to hold people accountable for their evil actions, but rather in many cases encourage them and often reward them.

We don’t have many Jeremiah’s standing up against the evil of our day, though. We Christians, cower behind the walls of our churches and fail to reach out into the world to share the good news with our brothers and sisters to introduce them to the one who can rescue them from the deceiver. We idly stand by and watch them race toward their destruction rather than share the words that will lead them toward the narrow path of salvation.

It isn’t easy living the Christian life as Jeremiah and all who came after him have found. But it is simple and well worth the journey. The simplicity is found in the summation of the law as Jesus told us, “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Do these two things and you cannot help but share God’s word with those around you.

Who near you needs to hear the good news today? Who can you rescue from sure destruction by introducing them to the Savior?

Join me next time, won’t you?

Richard

Speak only what God tells you to say (Numbers 22:38)

Today’s Readings: Numbers 20-22; Revelation 22

“Well, I’m here now. But do you think I can say whatever I please? I can only say what God tells me to say. God puts the words in my mouth.”

A few times during my ministry, I’ve prepared well for a Sunday morning sermon only to get a feeling that sermon wasn’t the one God wanted me to preach. I’m glad it doesn’t happen often because it’s very unnerving to stand in the pulpit and realize all your notes miss the mark. I’m not pleased with those situations. I much prefer preparing a sermon for a couple of weeks before I give it.

I’ve learned, however, that some of my best sermons are those in which God decides to throw away my notes. They don’t come out very polished, but they get results. So maybe I should step back and enjoy those times when I must rely completely on God putting words in my mouth.

He promised His followers not to worry when they stood in front of kings and authorities because He would put the right words in their mouth. I’ve come to understand what they means in those times I needed His words. Most of the time He wants me to work hard to put words together for His edification and glory, though. I think it causes me to concentrate on who He is and what He wants to do for His people.

Balaam understood this principle very well. Well known to the ancient world as a prophet of the Eternal One, his prophecies came true much more often than not. Kings and rulers came to him often for advice, for blessing people and things, and to curse enemies. Balaam apparently demonstrated no loyalty to any particular nation or sect. He sat with a group of men that assisted him and proclaimed what he determined God would have him say.

Balaam’s staked his reputation on his prophecies and his answer should not surprise us. “I can say only what God tells me to say.” The reality though, God calls all of us as prophets and priests in this current age. He wants us to listen carefully to His words and share them as His witnesses to a lost world. He wants us to echo Balaam’s words, “I can say only what God tells me to say.”

Can you imagine a world in which all of us spoke God’s words to each other? We would forgive where forgiveness is needed. We would admonish when our brothers and sisters begin to stray from God’s path. We would praise and bless each other. We would prophecy of God’s coming. We would teach His precepts and live them as they become part of our inner being. Life around us would change significantly if we spoke only what God told us to speak.

Why such a difference? Because we would attach ourselves intimately to Him. His spirit would permeate every part of us, not only our speech, but our thoughts and actions. Our desires would focus on pleasing Him through our undying love and service. What a different world it would be!

How can you begin to live as Balaam, speaking only what God tells you to say?
Join me next time, won’t you?Richard